Help Desk
Welcome to the '''GalCiv Help Desk'!'' You can ask questions here, and check back later for a response. Please check that your question has not already been answered by another page before asking here! You might also check out the Patch Notes for updates (to see if your issue has already been resloved). Note: Your question may be answered by other players. For official Stardock support, check out the Galactic Civilizations Knowledgebase, or submit a trouble ticket. Unanswered questions Got a question? Click the Edit link to the right of this note and type it in, then click Save. What should I do to improve relations with a given race? Hi, I've just started a new game. The places in the small galaxy are being defined, and I feel an alliance is just what I need to secure my place in the universe. However, even though I have the "Alliances" tech, all other races are "neutral" to me. What can I do to improve it to "close" so I can ally with at least one of them? Does trade ability bonus help the other side of the trade? Say I have a trade ability of +200% and I get a profit of 30bc/t from a freighter. If the AI I'm trading with has a trade ability of +100%, will it receive just 20bc/t, or would it get 30bc/t? Miborovsky 07:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC) How are music files added? I tried to just add the file into the "music" folder, that didn't seem to work. So then I looked for an XML file and found "gc2_Multimedia.xml", but I have no idea where to get the MD5/date/sizes it wants. Can someone explain exactly how music files are added? All the ships and anomalies in the game are black, I cannot see them. Except for the adjustable color frames, they're extremely hard to spot, as if they'd be lying in deep shadow, with no light anywhere around. Planets and stars aren't visible either. Just some circles with names underneath. Have a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 with new drivers and tried the 3dAnalyzer. Any ideas? : Any chance you're using a non-english windows 2000? There's a known isssue with 'hollow' graphics: http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?ForumID=274&AID=101707 link. -- Are these known bugs or personal problems? 1) Buildings appearing on sea tiles after game load. 2) Clicking a ship components thumbnail, then pressing remove does remove the component, but not the thumbnail (only happens with 'functionality' components, not extras). 3) Creating fleets sometimes doesn't work correctly. When trying (with a high enough logistics count) the ships selected stay separated, and an 'empty fleet' is created instead (just an empty thumbnail with no ship in it and logistics count 4). The empty fleet disappears after clicking disband. '' How do defenses and offenses interact? When does it make sense to use defenses, given that it usually takes more space than offense? ; Military starbases : if you want to get those nice defence bonuses from the starbase, you have to have at least one defence ; Fleet combat : In fleet combat, if you prefer to have few large starship, instead of many small ones, then it makes sense to put some defence. Consider this. If you have a single large ship attacking a fleet of 3 small ones, then 1 extra attack is just that 1 attack, but 1 extra defence is 3 times defence (all 3 ships will shoot you in one turn, thus the defence will work 3 times per turn). However, I do believe that defence needs to be made cheaper. Currently attack one means you always roll one in attack. But defence one means you roll between 0 and 1. So effectively defence one is two times worse than attack one. See ship combat and fleet combat for details about combat 08:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC) I think we could use a page for major differences between GC1 and GC2/Other 4x games and GC2 ''. . . for those that just want to skim and figure out what they might want to research in more depth. For example, many people seem to be stumbling over the concept that population plays no role in how productive a planet is. Recently answered questions How does the combat actually works? In the manual it is said that attack roll starts from 1 and defence roll starts from 1. But then if both ships have attack of 1 and defence of 1, the will be never damage done, because both attack and defence will always roll 1. So, how does it work? :According to Cari Begle (lead developer on GC2), all combat rolls have a minimum of zero, not one. --DarthKryo 02:55, 12 March 2006 (UTC) What does a NULL point means on the graphic modding explanation? Hi, I'm thinking of trying some 3D models mods, but I don't have access to 3D Studio or Maya (I'm planning on using Blender). I don't quite get what is a NULL point. Can you elaborate on that, please, so I can "port" the concept to Blender or Wings3D? :I am using 3DS MAX and can't find it myself. :: In 3ds Max, the hardpoints are Dummy-class Helper objects, found on the Helpers tab of the create palette. --DarthKryo 02:55, 12 March 2006 (UTC) What does the number in parens besides the influence rating of a planet mean? I've looked in the manual and on various forums and have not been able to figure this one out. The mouse over gives the break down for the larger number, but there is no apparent meaning attached to the other one that I can figure out. --Cymsdale 00:57, 12 March 2006 (UTC) :If you mean the one that's fairly low (1.23, say), then that is the ratio of your influence to other people's influence. Areas that are shown as under your influence have a value 1.0 or higher. Around 5 or 6 is necessary to risk a revolt. -- 01:43, 12 March 2006 (UTC) What is the highest difficulty the AI doesn't cheat on? I always play on Tough, but the AI still seems pretty idiotic to me :( The highest it does not cheat on is Intelligent. Anything above that and it gets bonuses to production/economy. If it's doing silly things, report them as bugs! ;-) -- 01:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC) If I buy a trade good from another race, it seems that I do retain the trade good but cannnot sell it to anyone else. This could be exploity as it takes no tile on any of your planets. If I build a trade good and then destroy/decommission it, would I still retain the bonus from the trade good? 24.17.141.99 20:43, 4 March 2006 (UTC) You're not buying a trade good, you are buying the rights to use that trade good. You can't go and sell it to another player, because you don't actually own it. The original player still owns it, and can trade it to others. Also, you can't destroy/decommission a trade good, super project, or galactic achievement for this very reason. Consumed Crustacean 03:41, 6 March 2006 (UTC) How do you get the medals/awards from the Metaverse to show up when you post in the forums? First, go to the Edit My Characters page on the metaverse, and make sure that you have a default character selected. The 'default' button will be lit next to the default character; click the dimmed 'default' button by another character to change the default character. Your default character will be the one whose medals appear on your forum posts. That should be all you need to do, but keep in mind the metaverse uses caching heavily so it may take a while for medals to update or appear on your posts after you earn them. --DarthKryo 23:16, 5 March 2006 (UTC) Is there any advantage to custom building your own freghters with more cargo or faster engines? Only slightly. You can only place one trade module on a ship, so there's no way to put more on. More engines will get your freighter to its target faster so you can set up trade routes more quickly, but it will have no other effect after that. --DarthKryo 23:15, 5 March 2006 (UTC) Are there any other Galciv2.exe command line options, other than w, cheat, and nointro? Yes, although they are not really all that useful. See command line options. -- 19:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC) How does cross damage-type defense work? Say 30 shields versus 10 mass drivers for example - what kind of damage are we looking at? Defenses are only square-root effective against attack types other than their primary purpose. So 30 shields would be effively strength 5 (sqrt(30) = 5.4, round down). The mass drivers will dish out anywhere from 0 to 10 damage, and the shields will deflect anywhere from 0 to 5 damage points. So you're looking at 5 damage if both systems perform perfectly (although you could potentially land anywhere from 0 to 10 points depending on how things go). --Steelviper 15:09, 1 March 2006 (UTC) : According to the manual all defences are just added (with square roots and all). But is it really true for the combat itself? I have suspicion that it may be just maximum out of those values, not the sum. Can anyone clarify? 06:39, 4 March 2006 (UTC) Is it a bug that you always have to pay for all social production capacity, even if it isn't currently doing anything? It is not as described in the manual, where it says that you will be given back the money spent on unused production. This was not actually implemented, as it was felt that it might actually unbalance the game. It is possible to optimise it by reducing the social spending slider to zero but setting the planets where you want to continue building to focus on social spending. -- 17:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC) How exactly does the spending slider work? How does this interact with the three smaller bars for military/social/research? The spending slider reflects your discretionary spending - the amount that is spent on research and social and military projects (and not things like leases and colony maintenance that are automatically deducted). It should be used, along with the tax slider, for balancing the budget. The three smaller bars adjust the relative proportion of spending, allowing you to prioritise one thing over another. -- 17:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC) :Regarding the production sliders again, I must confess that I don't get it. For example, regarding research, how do I know what to do (with both the big and little sliders) to allocate exactly 'enough' money to research so that all my labs are 100% utilized? From what I gathered on IRC I could dump my entire GDP into research and waste a lot of money but not get any additional benefit whatsoever. Seems wrong to me. ::I'm not sure what part of IRC you got that from. As far as I know, it's directly proportional - the only effect research centers and the like have is as a kind of multiplier. I could be wrong, but the time taken always seems to go down if I increase the slider. Social and military production is the same, except that you might not be building things, in which case it's wasted. You're always researching something. -- 15:15, 1 March 2006 (UTC) What about foreign language support in Galactic Civilizations II? Paradox is in the process of translating files now. We will also be putting up our translation kit at http://www.galciv2.com so people can translate it however they want. Why does Galactic Civilizations II ask me for my activation code every time I launch it? If you've manually created a shortcut to Galactic Civilizations II and the game always asks for activation, right-click on the shortcut and make sure the working directory is set (or the Start In directory in Windows XP). Without the directory listed in the shortcut, the game will either continually ask for activation or will not start at all. When trying to build buildings it tells me Time To Build: Never. Why is that and how do I fix it? This can be caused by one of two things: # You do not have enough resources dedicated to Social Building. Raise the % allocated to social building. # If you're finances are well into the negative (red), the game will halt all social building until you are less seriously endebted. What are some of the most used hotkeys or keyboard commands for Galactic Civilizations II? The manual has a listing of other hotkeys and tips, but a couple are worth mentioning: * Press Ctrl-S to QuickSave a game. * When a Constructor is selected, press the B key to build a starbase. * When a fleet or fleets are selected in the ship stack, press U to ungroup the ships in the fleet(s). * When first starting a new game, press Ctrl-N to create a new map with your current game settings. * The Set Rally Point button the left side of the main map interface can be used to establish targets for newly constructed vessels. After creating your first rally point, the little circle with a downward arrow next to the planet thumbnail (when you have a planet selected) can be used to set the rally point target for ships constructed on that world. Do I have to kill every race to win a campaign mission? No. Winning a mission doesn't always mean killing every last potential enemy. Focus on the mission objectives. How do I play Galactic Civilizations II in a window instead of fullscreen? Create a shortcut to the GalCiv2.exe file, open up its properties and add ' w' after the shortcut target (without the quote marks, and after any existing quote marks). Where are my Galactic Civilizations II saved games and preferences stored? Save games and preferences are stored under Documents and Settings\%username\My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2. You can edit the prefs.ini file in that directory to adjust the game resolution to custom values if the in-game detection doesn't pickup special modes that are supported by your graphics card. Category:Support